Getting on with it

It's been a productive sort of Saturday. We started by going back to the lodge one more time; towels were waiting to be put away after tumbling, the fridge needed clearing out so that the lunch stuff was back at the boat, and the final vacuuming with Henry needed doing.

With the lodge once more ready for paying guests, we nipped back to the boat to offload. Then off we went again to walk to Betty's. It's a measure of how much better I'm feeling that I was quite looking forward to it. Mind you, it's still quite a trek. A decent amount of meat was bought, including a boned and rolled pork loin joint for tomorrow.

I'd intended to reheat the second half of the veal Estofado last night, but our decision to get fish and chips from Stewart's van means that the defrosted veal must be eaten tonight. Stewart's proved to be as good as we'd been told, by the way, and very good value. I paid a tenner for fish and chips for two of us with far more chips than we could eat.

Next time, I'm getting the small chips; goodness knows what the large portions are like.

We got back to the boat in nice time for lunch. It had been chilly enough walking in the easterly wind that we had soup with our sandwiches for the first time for ages.

A quiet time followed, but finally I stirred myself to make up two short mooring lines from one old one. This means that we have lines especially for mooring in the marina.

 I measured the length needed for the bow line utilising the existing eye splice. It's of a quality that I can only aspire to, the line having been made by Peter Flockhart at Tradline in Braunston. Having cut the line down, I put a back splice in the other end. It's the first serious rope work that I've done for a while. Really dedicated readers will recall that some years ago I damaged the rotator cuff of my right shoulder working the horrendous paddles of the Knowle flight on the northern GU and that it took about three years for it to heal properly.

This is the first time since that I've dared stress it with the tugging and heaving of splicing or fender making and to my horror I had a bit of trouble recalling how to make the crown knot that starts a back splice. A bit of advice from Sheila got me going and the splice duly emerged.

Having checked that the same length was needed for the stern line, I cut down the remaining piece of rope. This time both eye splice and back splice were achieved with just the difficulty of working with a well used line. "Hard laid" would be the best description; it needed some serious finger strength to open up the lay to get the ends through.

It does mean that I can now relax for the remainder of the day, with an easy meal to cook tonight.